Speech acts: sampling the social construction of mental retardation in everyday life.

A sample of speech acts in everyday discourse referring to persons or events having to do with the term mental retardation was analyzed in order to investigate the belief that language use both constructs and reflects cultural norms that define the social roles of persons reduced to object status through categorical membership. Speech acts gathered suggest four emergent themes: the discourse of category membership, the dichotomy of normal and abnormal, issues of place and space, and fear. These themes were explicated from a social constructionist perspective, displaying the way speech acts construct mental retardation and subvert individuals with the label into demeaned and ridiculed objects of cultural fear.

Uninsured spells of the poor: prevalence and duration.

The number of persons without health insurance is increasing. Although research has focused on the uninsured poor and the duration of spells without health insurance, less attention has been paid to the dynamics of spells without health insurance among those in poverty. Here it is shown that the typical uninsured spell is longer for the uninsured poor (roughly 8.

Process, perils, and pitfalls of research in prison.

Correctional facilities are fertile fields for conducting nursing research and are virtually untapped by nurse researchers. Colleagues inclined to do research in correctional facilities can make significant contributions to nursing literature. This article focuses on the process, perils, and pitfalls of research in penitentiaries.

Photoreceptor orientation and alignment in nasal fundus ectasia.

Background: We investigated whether Stiles-Crawford (SCE) functions, a measure of photoreceptor orientation and alignment, are disturbed in patients with nasal fundus ectasia (tilted disc; Fuch's coloboma without apparent pupillary involvement).

Methods: SCE functions were obtained in three observers with nasal fundus ectasia, using psychophysical methods.

Results: In all cases, disruption of photoreceptor alignment can be inferred.

Construct validity of the computerized version of the Category Test.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the construct validity of the computer version of the Category Test (CT) in relation to the standard version. As part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, outpatient rehabilitation clients completed either the standard CT (n = 49) or the computerized version (n = 56). Two principal component factor analyses were performed and the factor structures compared to a solution reported previously in the literature.

Expectations and motives for alcohol use in a psychiatric outpatient population.

The purpose of the study was to assess alcohol expectancies and motives of psychiatric outpatients with and without comorbid current or lifetime substance use disorders. Seventy-five psychiatric outpatients with diagnoses of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders were administered the Alcohol Effect Expectancy Questionnaire-Abridged Version and the Drinking Motives Measure. Results demonstrated that the internal reliabilities for the two scales were comparable with those reported for these measures in the general population.

Neuropsychological features and differential diagnosis of sleep apnea syndrome in children.

Recognizing the signs and effects of pediatric apnea is essential for accurate diagnosis and treatment of children with psychological difficulties. Sleep apnea can have serious deleterious effects on children's cognitive, behavioral, and physiological functioning. Diurnal effects include inattention, decreased academic performance, oppositionality, and restlessness, stemming from frequent nocturnal arousals, excessive daytime sleepiness, and hypoxia.

Objective assessment of peritraumatic dissociation: psychophysiological indicators.

Objective: The aims of this study were to investigate psychophysiological changes associated with peritraumatic dissociation in female victims of recent rape and to assess the relation between these changes and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Method: Eighty-five rape victims were examined in a laboratory setting within 2 weeks after the rape, and measures of heart rate, skin conductance, and nonspecific movement were collected. Self-report indexes of reactions to the trauma and interviews to assess PTSD symptoms and peritraumatic dissociation were also completed.

1-Acetyl-3-hydroxyadamantane and 1-carboxy-3-hydroxyadamantane.

The crystal structures of the adamantane derivatives, 1-acetyl-3-adamantanol, C12H18O2, (4), and 3-hydroxyadamantane-1-carboxylic acid, C11H16O3, (5), have been determined by X-ray diffraction. Both structures show extensive intermolecular hydrogen bonding involving the hydroxyl and acetyl groups in compound (4), and the hydroxyl and carboxyl groups in compound (5).

Parental divorce and intimate relationships of young adults.

This study examined associations among parental divorce, family conflict, sex, and young men's and women's achievement of intimacy. Analyses indicated that family conflict and sex, but not divorce, were significantly related to intimacy. Examination of those within the divorced group suggest that time of divorce, along with family conflict, were related to intimacy.

The origin of low mass stars.

Recent evidence indicates that most low mass stars in the Galaxy (< 5 M [symbol: see text]) form alongside massive stars in clusters embedded in giant molecular clouds. Once their parental gas is removed, the fate of these clusters is to disperse and blend into the field population of the galactic disk. The distribution of stellar masses in the solar neighborhood, called the Initial Mass Function, is discussed in the context of the origin of low mass stars.

On what basis hope? Modern progress and postmodern possibilities.

Modern and postmodern versions of hope as they apply to services for persons labeled as having mental retardation were examined. Proponents of modernism construct hope as relying on an ever-improving science to accurately comprehend mental retardation and other disabilities and the effectiveness of professional interventions. This myth of scientific progress is traced in various forms through American intellectual history to the development of special education as interventionist social science.

Surgical residents' scores on measures of Machiavellianism and physicians' uncertainty.

51 self-reported scores on the Mach V Scale and 56 scores on Physician's Reactions to Uncertainty Constructs from surgical residents in three different specialties (30 general, 14 orthopedics, 9 urology, and 3 other) showed no significant difference between means on the two measures.

Preprocessing of HPLC trace impurity patterns by wavelet packets for pharmaceutical fingerprinting using artificial neural networks.

The immediate objective of this research program is to evaluate several computer-based classifiers as potential tools for pharmaceutical fingerprinting based on analysis of HPLC trace organic impurity patterns. In the present study, wavelet packets (WPs) are investigated for use as a preprocessor of the chromatographic data taken from commercial samples of L-tryptophan (LT) to extract input data appropriate for classifying the samples according to manufacturer using artificial neural networks (ANNs) and the standard classifiers KNN and SIMCA. Using the Haar function, WP decompositions for levels L = 0-10 were generated for the trace impurity patterns of 253 chromatograms corresponding to LT samples that had been produced by six commercial manufacturers.

An experimental comparison of three types of case management for homeless mentally ill persons.

Objective: Three types of case management were compared to determine their relative effectiveness in helping people with severe mental illness who were homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Methods: Subjects recruited from a psychiatric emergency room and inpatient units were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions: broker case management, in which the client's needs were assessed, services were purchased from multiple providers, and the client was monitored; assertive community treatment only, in which comprehensive services were provided for an unlimited period; and assertive community treatment augmented by support from community workers, who assisted with activities of daily living and were available for leisure activities. Of 165 subjects recruited, 135 were followed for 18 months.

Developmental control of cell division in leech embryos.

During embryogenesis, cell division must be spatially and temporally regulated with respect to other developmental processes. Leech embryos undergo a series of unequal and asynchronous cleavages to produce individually recognizable cells whose lineages, developmental fates and cell cycle properties have been characterized. Thus, leech embryos provide an opportunity to examine the regulation of cell division at the level of individual well-characterized cells within a community of different types of cells.

Discharge patterns of neurons in the rostral superior colliculus of cat: activity related to fixation of visual and auditory targets.

Neurons in the rostral superior colliculus (SC) of alert cats exhibit quasi-sustained discharge patterns related to the fixation of visual targets. Because some SC neurons also respond to auditory stimuli, we investigated whether there is a population of neurons in the rostral SC which is active in relation to fixation of both auditory and visual targets. We identified cells which were active with visual fixation and which continued to discharge if the fixation stimulus was briefly extinguished.

Protective factors within the family, and their role in fostering resiliency in African American adolescents.

Violence has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with African American males residing in urban areas bearing the brunt of this epidemic. The violence permeating our society emanates from a variety of societal ills, including poverty, racism, substance abuse and exposure to violence. Traditionally, methods of research on adolescent violence have focused on an identification of associated risk factors.

Light enhances hydrodynamic signaling in the multimodal caudal photoreceptor interneurons of the crayfish.

1. The caudal photoreceptor (CPR) interneurons in the sixth abdominal ganglion of the crayfish are complex, multi-modal interneurons. These cells respond directly to light with tonic spike discharges, and they integrate synaptic input from an array of fili-form mechanoreceptors on the tailfan.

Prenatal care experiences and birth weight among Mexican immigrant women.

National studies indicate that Mexican immigrant women tend to have more positive birth outcomes than other groups, despite receiving relatively low levels of medical prenatal care. Our study-based on in-depth interviews with immigrant women who had recently given birth in Chicago-examines women's experiences seeking prenatal care. Qualitative findings contribute to understanding why many of these women received less than optimal care during pregnancy.

Pharmaceutical fingerprinting: evaluation of neural networks and chemometric techniques for distinguishing among same-product manufacturers.

The present study was undertaken to evaluate several computer-based classifiers as potential tools for pharmaceutical fingerprinting by utilizing normalized data obtained from HPLC trace organic impurity patterns. To assess the utility of this approach, samples of L-tryptophan (LT) drug substance were analyzed from commercial production lots of six different manufacturers. The performance of several artificial neural network (ANN) architectures was compared with that of two standard chemometric methods, K-nearest neighbors (KNN) and soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA), as well as with a panel of human experts.

Speciation of aluminum in biological systems.

As a "hard", trivalent metal ion, Al3- binds strongly to oxygen-donor ligands such as citrate and phosphate. The aqueous coordination chemistry of Al is complicated by the tendency of many Al complexes to hydrolyze and form polynuclear species, many of which are sparingly soluble. Thus there is considerable variation among the Al stability constants reported for several important ligands.

Clients' evaluation of health care services in a battered women's shelter.

There is a dearth of evaluation research regarding shelter health care. Health needs outweigh health services which are rarities within shelter settings (Gross & Rosenberg, 1987). The purposes of this article are to review the need for shelter health care, describe how shelter-based advanced practice nurses (APNs) addressed health care needs and program goals in one shelter setting, and report findings from an impact evaluation study where APN services were rated by shelter clients (n = 69) for themselves and their children (n = 95).